The purpose of the study was to conduct a Lexical Decision Experiment using a series of related words, non-related words, and nonwords to determine the response times and the accuracy of the participants. The experiment measures difference in reaction times between related words, non-related words, and nonwords. The basis of the experiment was the lexical decision that measures various information regarding how words impact the decision-making process. The hypothesis was that words that are related to each other would have shorter reaction times due to the principle of semantic. The other hypothesis was that the reaction time for nonwords would be shorter than that of words. The Lexical Decision Experiment was conducted through the online lab. The results showed that the reaction time for the closely related words was shorter than that of the distantly related words. The design of the study was a within-subjects design as all the participants tested for all the conditions.
Lexical Decision Experiment
Lexical decisions can be described as deciding whether a string of letters are words or not. The experiment was introduced by Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971) during the early 1970s. While the decision in the task appeared to be somewhat trivial, it illustrated the critical processes and cognitive tasks of reading words. The experiment is used to measure the decisions between words and nonwords and the reaction times between closely related and distantly related words. The hypothesis was that words that are related to each other would have shorter reaction times due to the principle of semantic. The other hypothesis was that the decision reaction times for the nonword would be shorter than that of real words. The rationale for the hypothesis was that similar words would be easy to identify hence would have shorter reaction times compared to non-related words. Nonwords are also easier to identify hence have a shorter reaction time. The experiment was conducted, the results tabulated, and the results analyzed to show different factors that affect lexical decisions.
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The lexical experiment has been used to measure semantic priming, a scenario where the response to a specific target such as the word ‘dog’ is faster when it is preceded with a semantically relate prime like ‘cat’ compared to when it is an unrelated prime ‘car.’ Semantic priming can occur in many situations because the brain activates related words and concepts and facilitates faster responses from the brain. While the process of priming is usually automatic, it is usually influenced by the particular task, like whether the words are related or not.
Method
Participants
The total number of participants included in the study was N=45. 22 were female participants, and 23 were male participants. The participants were recruited from an experimental psychology program. All the participants went through all the test conditions when undertaking the experiment. There was a single testing session, and the participants were presented with different words that were closely related, distantly related, nonwords, and not related. No compensation was made for the experiment as the participants took part in the experiment voluntarily.
Design
The design of the experiment was a within-subjects design since the participants were tested on all the given conditions. The independent variables that were used in the experiment were the relationship and type of words, i.e., closely related, distantly related, nonwords, and non-related words. The dependent variables that were measured were the reaction times and the accuracy of the response. The reaction times were measured by identifying the difference in time when a word is presented and when the participant picks the word. The accuracy was measured by considering whether the participant made the lexical decision correctly.
Procedure
Participants for the study were recruited from the experimental psychology program. They accessed the study through an online link that allowed for one to undertake the experiment. The results generated from each of the participants were recorded. The reaction times and accuracy for the closely related, distantly related, nonwords, and non-related words were examined.
Results
The first hypothesis being tested was the difference in the reaction times between closely related and distantly related words. The results showed that the reaction times for closely related words (M=990.63 for females & M = 1023.16 for males) were shorter than that of distantly related words (M = 1084.96 for females, & M = 1328.62 for males). There were no significant differences between closely related words and those that are not related. A visual depiction of the significant differences is shown in figure 1. The reaction times between nonwords and closely related words were different for males and females. Females had a shorter reaction time for closely related than for nonwords, while males had a longer reaction time for closely related words than nonwords. The general mean reaction times from the longest to the shortest were distantly related words, nonwords, non-related words, and closely related words. The results also showed that the accuracy in determining closely related words was higher than that of distantly related words, nonwords, and not related words.
Discussion
The objective of the experiment was to investigate whether there is a difference in the reaction times and accuracy for close words, distant words, nonwords, and not-related words. The experiment accomplished the given objective by analyzing the reaction times for all the different conditions. The hypothesis for the experiment was supported by the fact that close words had the shortest reaction times and the highest accuracy. The results revealed that closely related words were easy to identify hence had the shortest reaction times. Haro et al. (2017) established that lexical decisions had shorter reaction times for ambiguous words. In the given experiment, ambiguous words were closely related words that had almost similar and related meanings. The findings were similar to the findings from the experiment. Haro et al. (2017) further observed that ambiguous words benefited from having an enhanced semantic activation when compared to unambiguous words throughout the process of word recognition. One of the reasons for the findings was that ambiguous words were easy to identify.
The experiment also investigated the difference in the accuracy between close words and nonwords. The study established that nonwords had shorter reaction times than distantly related words. The findings were similar to the hypothesis that nonwords would have a shorter reaction time compared to distantly related words. According to Rotaru et al. (2018), semantic activation is derived from neural network models of word activation. In most instances, the knowledge about words is usually presented in the form of a pattern for activation through a collection of processing units. Related and familiar words would have similar patterns of activation. The presentation of nonwords would result in challenges in the patterns of activation. The results from the experiment thus show that semantic activation occurs in the brain due to neural networks that can lead to an improvement in long-term memory.
The accuracy between closely related words and other words showed that closely related words had the highest accuracy. Laurence et al. (2018) investigated the influence of reading efficiency. The study established that the efficiency in reading was highest when reading was conducted with regular words. The findings are similar to the results from the experiment that showed that the accuracy in determining the specific words was highest when the words were closely related. Lexical decisions are thus difficult in instances where the words are distantly related. The differences in the given words created inefficiency.
The limitation of the study was that there could be the presence of noise where certain sections of the experiment impacted the accuracy in other sections. The participants were presented with the same stimuli on two separate occasions, and it could impact the accuracy on the second occasion. There were multiple variations in the experiment observed in the male and female populations. One of the reasons for the variation could be the small sample size. The experiment can be conducted on a larger sample size in the future and the given variables observed.
Conclusion
The lexical decision experiment provided a greater understanding of the difference in reading close words, nonwords, distant words, and non-related words. The experiment was conducted to evaluate the lexical decisions and the comparison of the different conditions. The results showed that close words had the shortest reaction times. Closely related words were identified to have the shortest reaction times and the highest accuracy. The implication of the research is that close words have neural networks in the brain that make it easy to identify them. The accuracy in such words was also high due to the formation of neural networks.
References
Haro, J., Demestre, J., Boada, R., & Ferré, P. (2017). ERP and behavioral effects of semantic ambiguity in a lexical decision task. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 44, 190-202.
Laurence, P. G., Pinto, T. M., Rosa, A. T. F., & Macedo, E. C. (2018). Can a lexical decision task predict efficiency in the judgment of ambiguous sentences? Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica , 31 (1), 1-10.
Rotaru, A. S., Vigliocco, G., & Frank, S. L. (2018). Modeling the structure and dynamics of semantic processing. Cognitive science , 42 (8), 2890-2917.
Appendix
Figure 1
Figure 1. The general mean reaction times from the longest to the shortest were distantly related words, nonwords, non-related words, and closely related words.
Figure 2
Figure 2. The average accuracy from the most accurate to the least accurate conditions were closely related words, not related words, distantly related words, and nonwords.
